Display posts from previous

Sort by

Note from Talvieno: This log of Josh's is actually from another thread. I moved it here because I believe it merits its own spotlight as a devlog. It is brief, but it has a picture! I hope that if you haven't seen it before, you enjoy it.
The original timestamp on this post was August 11th, 8:34 PM, Central US Time Zone, 2018. Due to the way the forums work I had to repurpose one of my own posts in order to duplicate one belonging to Josh.

My recent work has consisted of moving a major game subsystem from Lua to C, which is an ongoing process as you all know. In doing so, I had to choose between one of two major, high-level architectures, each with very different strengths and weaknesses. Despite having high hopes in the beginning, after having the system solidly in-place, I have only just come to the conclusion that I made the wrong choice. Sadly, it was necessary to have the system up-and-running before I could make the determination that it wouldn't pan out. It's rather heartbreaking, and, while I had planned on simply writing an account of this (failed) work, I feel that my time would be better spent taking the weekend to recharge, implementing the system in the other architectural style next week, and writing about the results at that time. Frankly, I'm too disgruntled and exhausted from work to produce a decent devlog at the moment anyway.

Apologies! If lessons learned the hard way are a currency, then I am a very rich man On the brighter side, I'm sure it will make for a compelling story. Just...not right now

Another week? Unacceptable! I demand an 8000 word log within the next 15 minutes!

Well could you at least say what system it is, and could we get a shiny or 2 to hold us over? You could say work on graphics for an hour or 2 tonight and still technically deliver something today Might help alleviate the heartbreak too

Actually...that kind of mentality always ends up breaking my heart even more, to be honest. And it's where my head was today, which is exactly why I'm choosing to wait -- doing things purely for the log always feels bad to me. I not only feel bad about unsuccessful work, but then I also feel bad about trying to compensate with work that I didn't actually work hard on and am not invested in, but will be judged on nonetheless. It's a dangerous, stressful habit that I hope never to revisit

The subsystem is UI. It has been a long time coming, ever since PAX, really. Our UI system is in Lua, and was first built by Adam as a dev UI. I later asked him to scale it up to a full-featured one for player-facing stuff. As it always goes, only upon having that full-featured system did we begin to see the real issues with not having it engine-side. It has been holding me back from working effectively on gameplay that involves player interaction (which, after all, is arguably one of the more important features of an interactive game ). The choice was immediate-mode vs retained-mode.

And..

Despite the hard work on this fast, native, engine-side implementation of an immediate-mode UI, I have come to believe that the cons outweigh the pros. Another +1 to Josh's life experience :V

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford

Well could you at least say what system it is, and could we get a shiny or 2 to hold us over? You could say work on graphics for an hour or 2 tonight and still technically deliver something today Might help alleviate the heartbreak too

Actually...that kind of mentality always ends up breaking my heart even more, to be honest. And it's where my head was today, which is exactly why I'm choosing to wait -- doing things purely for the log always feels bad to me. I not only feel bad about unsuccessful work, but then I also feel bad about trying to compensate with work that I didn't actually work hard on and am not invested in, but will be judged on nonetheless. It's a dangerous, stressful habit that I hope never to revisit

And we'd never ask you to. No one wants to see you in that state. Yes, you'll be judged on your work, but has this community ever not been understanding about the troubles you face? We only get mad when you play up your Howard Hughes impersonation and leave us in the dark about what's going on. Please don't feel bad about not being in a flow state for every task at hand that requires doing when it requires doing.

Despite the hard work on this fast, native, engine-side implementation of an immediate-mode UI, I have come to believe that the cons outweigh the pros. Another +1 to Josh's life experience :V

A ToDo list! Well that's an awesome shiny! I imagine a certain project manager among us will be pleased

Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can

And we'd never ask you to. No one wants to see you in that state. Yes, you'll be judged on your work, but has this community ever not been understanding about the troubles you face? We only get mad when you play up your Howard Hughes impersonation and leave us in the dark about what's going on. Please don't feel bad about not being in a flow state for every task at hand that requires doing when it requires doing.

Thanks Hyperion, and of course, I didn't mean to imply that you guys aren't, without a doubt, some of the nicest and most encouraging people out there. It's really more of a me problem, as we all know. But hey, my journey toward pragmatism has come a long way nonetheless

I'm sure I'll feel better about it after a little R&R. Sometimes you just gotta step away from the code

It's really more of a me problem, as we all know. But hey, my journey toward pragmatism has come a long way nonetheless

Yes you certainly have, just as my own mind has exploded with ever more grandiose ideas of what could be someday Don't be too hard on yourself, you're doing great!

I'm sure I'll feel better about it after a little R&R. Sometimes you just gotta step away from the code

I really do need to step away from the screen

Maybe a 3 or 4 day weekend and a daytrip somewhere nice is in order, The great and powerful Google suggests that the Burden Museum & Botanical Gardens is nice

Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can

I just got an idea of a question from that picture. will there be a bomber class (a class that is larger than a fighter in other words a fighter maybe 5 to 15m in size while a bomber maybe double the size) that is able to carry a full complement of weapons ideal for ships like frigates, cruisers, or battleships and maybe destroyers such as missiles and torpedoes along with some or limited beam and pulse weapons because of course its a bomber (unlike a fighter which will have more beams and pulse turrets and maybe 1-2 missile turrets)? and can we group bombers and fighters into separate wings and squadrons and tell one to protect the other?

I just got an idea of a question from that picture. will there be a bomber class (a class that is larger than a fighter in other words a fighter maybe 5 to 15m in size while a bomber maybe double the size) that is able to carry a full complement of weapons ideal for ships like frigates, cruisers, or battleships and maybe destroyers such as missiles and torpedoes along with some or limited beam and pulse weapons because of course its a bomber (unlike a fighter which will have more beams and pulse turrets and maybe 1-2 missile turrets)? and can we group bombers and fighters into separate wings and squadrons and tell one to protect the other?

I would assume (And hope) that all of this is possible.

The modular research / building *should* easily allow more specialised ships, even if they're not given definite/discrete classes (I.e. fighter vs bomber). Their application I suppose entirely depends on balancing of generation more than any hard barriers in place to stop you doing so.

A ToDo list! Well that's an awesome shiny! I imagine a certain project manager among us will be pleased

Albeit a confusing one.
It wasn't until I was editing the pic that I realised that there was so much overlap between the three columns, two would have sufficed..
(however, given the state of mind of the OP (i.e. Josh), ain't no way I'm gonna tell da boss that he be messing with ma vibe!! )

So I edited it and here's an easier one to read-at-a-glance
So out of a total of 19 bullet points, Josh has completed 57.89% (11/ 19), with 42.1% left to complete (8/19)
( P.S. those are not dates, / is the divider sign in mathematics )

So, in my current job role, I have to keep track of progress, using Excel, so I've adopted a few colour codes for the cells.
- Yellow: stuff that needs to be worked on, but not started yet
- Orange: stuff that I am working on. or partially completeing
- Green: stuff that's done, well done!
- Red: stuff that I cannot do until something else is completed

So, in parting, Josh, I highly recommend you introduce coloured bullet points, with the option of re-ordering them by colour, so the orange ones could appear at the top.
It also helps with organising priority, where red ones can be chosen first (or not, depending on what the bigger picture is).

Believe me, there is nothing like seeing an Excel spreadsheet covered in green cells

Actually...that kind of mentality always ends up breaking my heart even more, to be honest. And it's where my head was today, which is exactly why I'm choosing to wait -- doing things purely for the log always feels bad to me. I not only feel bad about unsuccessful work, but then I also feel bad about trying to compensate with work that I didn't actually work hard on and am not invested in, but will be judged on nonetheless. It's a dangerous, stressful habit that I hope never to revisit

The subsystem is UI. It has been a long time coming, ever since PAX, really. Our UI system is in Lua, and was first built by Adam as a dev UI. I later asked him to scale it up to a full-featured one for player-facing stuff. As it always goes, only upon having that full-featured system did we begin to see the real issues with not having it engine-side. It has been holding me back from working effectively on gameplay that involves player interaction (which, after all, is arguably one of the more important features of an interactive game ). The choice was immediate-mode vs retained-mode.

I didn't mean to imply that you guys aren't, without a doubt, some of the nicest and most encouraging people out there. It's really more of a me problem, as we all know. But hey, my journey toward pragmatism has come a long way nonetheless

I'm sure I'll feel better about it after a little R&R. Sometimes you just gotta step away from the code

This may be the wrong place to ask, Josh, but are you enjoying creating the gameplay for Limit Theory?

Am I wrong in my perception that you find this aspect of developing the game to be much less satisfying than creating the "shinies"?

As you know, I'm somewhat addicted to your graphics but I am primarily here for the game.

Actually...that kind of mentality always ends up breaking my heart even more, to be honest. And it's where my head was today, which is exactly why I'm choosing to wait -- doing things purely for the log always feels bad to me. I not only feel bad about unsuccessful work, but then I also feel bad about trying to compensate with work that I didn't actually work hard on and am not invested in, but will be judged on nonetheless. It's a dangerous, stressful habit that I hope never to revisit

Needs shadows at the top on lists that are scrolled down, and the bottom on those that are scrolled up, but only if the content is past the top/bottom respectively.
These shadows are a fairly standard way of displaying the fact that there is more above/below, without requiring the user to interpret scroll bars.

Also, I hope you are being clever and your UI renders out from a markup.
If not... well. That's a shame.
Even just a subset of the rules available to CSS/HTML would SERIOUSLY increase the ability to alter the UI on the fly.

Despite the hard work on this fast, native, engine-side implementation of an immediate-mode UI, I have come to believe that the cons outweigh the pros. Another +1 to Josh's life experience :V

A ToDo list! Well that's an awesome shiny! I imagine a certain project manager among us will be pleased

My first thought was, "Ah, cool, a new devlog. I know it's frustrating to spend a week banging out unusable code, but a student of Karl Popper would recognize this as Science Done Right -- not a 'failed' experiment, but an entirely successful one because it revealed useful information about reality."

My second thought was, "Hey, a to-do list! Assuming these items aren't just made-up text to test UI features, it's nice to get this peek behind the curtain."

My third thought was, "Wait -- if an item's checkbox is illuminated, does that mean the code for that item is done? Or that it's yet-to-do?"